Hello everyone.
So, since the last blog post raised a few questions, let me start by a few quick clarifications about how buildings and districts will behave under the new regime.
Let’s take food for example. Right now, if you want to generate food, you build ‘farm districts’, that provide farmer jobs, that provide food. You are limited by how many farm districts you can build by the planet deposits. In addition, certain techs and buildings may unlock additional farmer jobs or give you bonuses to the farmer’s food production.
Under the new regime, buildings will provide jobs and resources, while districts will provide stackable bonuses. You won’t build ‘farm districts’, you will build farms – a new building, that you can build multiple times on a planet. They will provide farmer jobs and produce food. If you need more food, you could always build more farms. The only difference is, those buildings will not provide housing (those will be granted by districts).
However, if you want your farms to do better and produce more food per jobs, you will build districts. The more agricultural districts you will build, the bigger the bonus they will give to all the farms on your planet. Districts will not provide jobs and will not produce resources. Districts and buildings will be completely separate – you can have several farms on a planet and have 0 agricultural resources – nothing stops you from doing that. It only means you won’t get a bonus.
Every district will require a special resource. Agricultural districts will require one brizeen nitrate each. If you have ten agricultural districts, you’d need ten brizeen nitrates. If you don’t have the nitrate, then you can’t build agricultural districts. You can STILL build farms, you can STILL gather food, you just won’t get bonuses doing it.
Basically, think about districts as a completely optional layer that you don’t have to engage with at all. If you do, you will get bonuses, and you will get a great deal of flexibility about how you can develop your planets.
Unlike vanilla, the maximum number of agricultural districts you can build will be influenced by tech – several techs will give you a global increase to the maximum you can have. Some techs will also increase the overall number of districts you can have on a planet.
Now that that is out of the way, let’s proceed to the next part of the overhaul – the planetary specialization system.
Currently, in vanilla there are two planet specializations – resort and penal colony. In New Horizons we’ve added a bunch more, and I am planning to add even more with the economic overhaul. These add one-of-a-kind planets that have a specific part in your empire. Under the new regime, these planets will have access to unique, and highly specialized, districts.
For example, a simple industry district will give, +5% miner’s mineral output, +1% alloy and +1% consumer goods production (if this seems small, remember these bonuses stack, and you can easily have up to 15 districts of each type on the planet).
But a forge planet won’t have access to the standard industrial district – instead, it will have a ‘civilian industry district’ that might give +3% consumer goods production per district, and a ‘military industry districts’ that might give +3% alloy production per such district. These are more ‘cookie cutter’ districts, that have very specific goals in mind.
Every specialized planet will still have six districts, but some of those six won’t be the standard six, but specialized ones. Those specialized districts will still require a strategic resource, the same as the ‘general’ one. That means that if the regular industry district will require 1 duranium for each district, then each of the civilian industry or military industry districts will also require 1 duranium each.
How you choose to specialize your special planets will truly shape your empire. Will you choose to focus on mineral production, energy production, alloys or consumer goods on your single forge planet? Not only will you be limited by the total population and building slots on the forge world, but you also will not be able to fully specialize in all six fields.
Some specializations may even be very unique, influencing your entire civilization. The more prisons you build in your penal colony, the bigger the crime reduction you can feel across the empire – but the more dangerous and crime-ridden your penal colony will be. Embassy worlds may grant you bonuses to influence, trade, trust or grant a small opinion bonus.
A few things about numbers (and again, remember, this is all temporary and subject to change and balance). Right now, the goal is that a regular planet will have a maximum of 25 districts – a combination of planet size, tech bonuses, and potentially traditions and civics.
A player could build up to a maximum of 15 for each of the regular six districts. They will start with a max of 3, with tech and deposits increasing it to a maximum of 15. Specialized districts would have a maximum of 10 – a player will be able to build a starting amount of 5, and then a tech will increase those to 10.
This means that a player could potentially specialize 1.5 trees in a regular planet, and 2.5 trees on a specialized planet.
Also note there will be a system in place to reward the player that chooses to spread things around – the first and second districts will have larger than usual bonuses (for example, for the industrial district, the first will give +15% to mineral production and the second will grant +10%, and the third and above will grant +5% each). That means that even in the early game where you are limited to 3 districts of each type, you could get a bonus of 30% – which can be quite handy and very useful in early game.
I look forward to more of your questions and feedback, and I will attempt to respond to it in the next blog post.
Until then!
If we’re going to be damned, let’s be damned for what we really are. ― CaptainJean-Luc Picard